


A Business Trip

by balloonstand



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: M/M, Road Trips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-22
Updated: 2013-11-22
Packaged: 2018-01-02 08:38:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1054742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/balloonstand/pseuds/balloonstand
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ian and Mickey go on a road trip</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Business Trip

Mickey is insistent that it’s not a road trip, so Ian makes sure to call it one as often as he can. “How much gas money are we going to need for the road trip?” or “Who’s buying the food on this road trip?” or “I’m all packed for the road trip!”

“It’s not a fucking road trip. It’s a business trip.”

“But that makes it sound like you have to go to a meeting when really there’s cocaine sewn into every soft surface inside your car.”

“It’s a business. Fucking. Trip.”

What it actually is is simultaneously the best and worst decision of Ian’s life. On the one hand, it means that Ian would get to spend at least four days in a row with his whatever-Mickey-was-to-him. They would be would be out of the Southside the whole time and out of the brutal reach of Terry Milkovich. On the other hand, they were going to be travelling in a car that was eighty-percent cocaine to meet with a handful of drug dealers on their way to Arizona where they would sell the rest of their supply and come home. And the car, the drugs, their drug dealer contacts and the money for gas, food, and lodging were all Terry’s. So they wouldn’t be out of his reach at all if they fucked this up in any way.

Mickey came up with the idea when they were smoking in the back of Terry’s car a couple weeks ago. 

“This is a nice car,” Mickey had said.

It wasn’t. It was a piece of shit with at least a few bullet holes in it (which was another point in favor of “worst idea ever” because no cop was going to let a car riddled with bullet hole pass him up) and the material covering the seats was so worn down, it was hardly there at all. But Mickey was rubbing his hand over it in a delicate way like it was velvet and that made Ian feel inclined to agree with him.

“Really nice, yeah.” Ian blew the words out with the smoke he had been holding in his lungs. “I especially like how the passenger seat doesn’t sit up anymore.”

Mickey shrugged. “Makes it easier to fuck in here, doesn’t it?” Ian wondered briefly which Milkovich had broken the seat before deciding he’d really rather not know.

“Does this thing even drive? I’ve never seen you drive it.”

“It’s my dad’s. The rest of us only use it for emergencies, like when we need a reliable getaway car or some shit.”

“Reliable, sure.” Ian put an impressive amount of sarcasm into a sentence as short as that one.

Mickey punched him in the shoulder. “Fuck you, it’s reliable. This thing could make it all the way to Arizona and back in four days, stuffed with coke.”

Ian blinked. The pot was making his brain work slower than usual. “That’s pretty specific.”

“My dad makes that trip every year. He’s actually supposed to go in two weeks, but, you know, he’s in jail right now so I’ll probably go.” He turned his red-rimmed, bright eyes to Ian and they light up. He has an idea, Mickey says.  
+++

The plan is to drive fourteen hours the first day and twelve hours the second day. They are going stay in Arizona for a day before coming back home. Mickey won’t tell Ian where they’re stopping along the way, looking smug and self-important with his secrets. Ian rolls his eyes.

He is sitting on his front steps at four in the morning on the day they plan to leave. He has his packed bag at his feet and his drivers license and eighty dollars in his pocket. Fiona hadn’t been happy when he told her that he was leaving for almost a week to do a job with Mickey, but she had given him forty dollars anyway, “just in case.” Lip had slipped him another twenty last night and he had found twenty more in his bag, probably from an ROTC trip. Ian is all but positive that the car was going to break down sometime when they were in the middle of nowhere and he plans on saving his eighty dollars to help pay for a tow truck.

He touches his pocket now as Mickey pulls up to the curb. Ian tosses his bag on the back seat next to Mickey’s then slides into the passenger seat. 

“Ready?” Mickey yawns.

“Ready.”  
+++

It turns out that their first stop is only a few hours outside of Chicago. They have been quiet so far on the trip, yawning and rubbing their eyes more than they speak. Mickey parks the car in an empty lot behind a 7/11. There is a small group of men at the other end, maybe five or six of them. Ian can’t make out their faces from this distance, but he can tell that at least one of them is over six feet tall and most of them are bulked up like bouncers. He’s always hated bouncers. 

Mickey is examining the men too. His eyes flicker over them, calculating. “Stay in the car, Gallagher.”

“Like hell.” Ian came to help, didn’t he? Not stay in the car like a kid while Mickey did the grown-up work.

“Just stay in the fucking car. I know what I’m doing, all right? And I don’t need you getting in the way.”

Mickey pops the trunk and grabs out six of the trash bags packed in there. He should wait in the car, Ian knows that. Mickey has done this before and does know what he’s doing. This isn’t where Ian belongs. Still, Ian waits until Mickey starts across the empty lot with two of the garbage bags in hand then jumps out of the car and grabs two bags himself. 

Mickey has deposited his two bags at the men’s feet and is shaking hands like a proper businessman – which Ian finds hilarious for some reason – before he sees Ian. His eyes get wide before they narrow in a glare and his lips twitch. But it’s too late to do anything but act like this is part of the plan.

“Who the fuck is this?” one of the men asks, pointing at Ian with one hand and resting the other on his gun where it’s tucked into his pants. He is bald with tattoos on his head. 

Ian lets Mickey introduce him. “This is Ian. Our families are friends.” That is putting it generously, but these men don’t know that and the introduction seems to satisfy them. Baldy takes his hand off his gun and holds it out for Ian to shake.

Mickey is still glaring at Ian as he passes him, going to get the rest of the bags.

“So, is everything here? Even that, uh, special request?” The six-footer asks. Ian nods, though he doesn’t actually know. 

“Is that a promise?”

“Yeah.” He has no idea. For all he knows, those bags could be filled with old baby blankets. No one goes to open the bags though, so he guesses they trust him. Or they trust Terry.

Ian jumps at the feel of a hand running over his head. He whips his head around to see a man with shoulder-length brown hair and a big beard reaching for his hair again. Ian ducks away from him. 

“What the fuck!”

The man laughs and Ian realizes that he is high out of his mind. “Your hair,” the man tells him. “I didn’t think it would feel like real hair.”

“Why the hell wouldn’t it?” Ian wants to look behind him to see where Mickey is, but he doesn’t think it would be wise to take his eyes off this guy.

The man says slowly, “Red…” Before Ian can do anything, the man grabs the back of his neck with one hand to hold him in place and rubs the other through Ian’s hair. He pulls Ian’s head into his chest. The rest of the men laugh at the scene and none make a move to stop it.

“Haven’t you ever seen a redhead?” Ian addressed his question to the crazy man’s armpit because it was the only thing he can see.

“Hey!” Ian hears Mickey shouting. “Hey!”

Ian and the man are torn apart roughly. Ian feels a sharp pain where Mickey grabbed him to pull him away. He looks and sees small amounts of blood on his arm from where Mickey’s fingernails dug in and cut him. The crazy man’s face has similar scratches. All the laughter in the group is silenced by the new tension in the air.

“Well, that was cute,” Baldy says finally. “Is he your boyfriend or something?”

“Yeah,” another man chimes in, “are you trying to protect your boyfriend?” He draws the word “boyfriend” out in a singsong manner. The others aren’t laughing anymore, but edging in aggressively. They’re looking between Mickey and Ian, wondering if they’re going to have to teach some faggots a lesson.

Ian freezes, brain dead with panic. God, there’s so many of them and they’re all huge. He’s trying desperately to think of something when Mickey sucker-punches the man nearest him. The man goes down hard with blood trickling between his fingers as he clutches his nose.

In an instant, Baldy has pulled out his gun and trained it at on him. Mickey looks coolly down the barrel and says, “Protecting your boyfriend?”

It’s silent long enough that Ian starts worrying that he has seriously miscalculated. Mickey is almost shredding his lip with his teeth.

Then Baldy throws his head back with the force of his laughter. Ian joins in and hopes that Baldy can’t tell how stressed and fake his laugh is. He elbows Mickey who joins in with an even more obviously fake laugh.

The boys quickly collect the money and get back in the car. Lip told Ian once that people will only remember the last part of your conversation, so be sure to leave them laughing. It sounded much wiser when Lip said it than it does now.

“I told you I could handle this shit myself,” Mickey says.

“Then why’d you even bring me,” Ian asks, trying to keep his voice clear of emotion.

Mickey just shakes his head and mumbles something that Ian can’t catch.

It’s Ian’s turn to drive. This turns out to be a problem because he doesn’t know where’s he’s going and Mickey is terrible at giving directions. He shouts them out at the last minute when it’s too late to do anything and gets pissed when Ian doesn’t break traffic laws or the laws of physics to comply with his instructions. But somehow they make it onto the I-44 and Mickey tells him to just keep going along that highway.

Mickey is quiet other than giving directions. It’s not that unusual, even less so because he’s tired, but right now Ian just wants to hear Mickey talk. About anything. Mickey was never good at separating himself from what he was feeling, so anything he says will be a clue, a hint to what he thought when he saw Ian’s head buried in the crazy man’s armpit. One thing Ian can count on with Mickey is swift and decisive reaction. Overreaction, mostly.

“So,” Ian says a little too loudly, “that guy was weird.”

Mickey shrugs. “He’s a coke dealer.”

“He was petting me.” Ian takes his eyes off the road briefly to look at Mickey. He’s frowning. His lips are very slightly pursed and there is a deep furrow between his eyebrows. He doesn’t look angry so much as contemplative, like he doesn’t know anymore than Ian does why he was so angry at the crazy man.  
+++

No one tries to pet Ian at their second stop, this one in Oklahoma. Mickey tells him again to stay in the car and this time he listens, sliding over to the broken passenger seat. There are only two guys waiting for them this time, and apparently they are Mickey’s cousins. Ian is pretty sure Mickey can handle this one on his own. Besides, he’s too tired to want to get out of the car. He’s not worried about messing it up again, though, that’s definitely not the reason he’s staying in the car. He’s not worried that  
Mickey is going to get pissed and send him home. Nope, not worried about that at all.

When they get to Oklahoma City – their stopping point for the first day – they’re exhausted. The fatigue from waking up at four in the morning has caught up with them with a vengeance. In his exhaustion, Mickey takes them to the wrong motel before remembering the right one. By the time they get their room, they are frustrated as well as drained. 

Mickey flops down on one of the two beds. He is laying on his stomach, arms by his sides and legs slightly spread. Ian smiles looking down at him, reminded of how he was sleeping when Ian went to get Kash’s gun from him. And he can’t help himself.

Mickey grunts in annoyance when Ian sits down on his bed, then protests outright when Ian curls around him.

“You have your own fucking bed. Right over there.” Mickey points, in case Ian somehow failed to see the other bed, only three feet to his left.

“I want this one,” Ian murmurs.

“I’m already in this one. And I’m not moving.” He hugs the pillow to demonstrate his resolve not to be moved.

Ian takes a deep breath. “I didn’t just mean the bed.”

Mickey doesn’t say anything. Ian can feel tension fill the body in his arms and he sighs. He moves away, releasing Mickey gently and reluctantly. Mickey kind of twitches as Ian lets him go. Ian settles into his own bed. 

This wasn’t what he expected. He had to scoff at his predictions of them being partners in crime, joking around during the drives and maybe even talking about their goddamn feelings, then fucking and cuddling at night. Instead he was being left in the car because he was just making things harder for Mickey when he came with. Their car rides were been all but silent and Mickey had no plans to fuck. 

Ian silently chastises himself: Love-talking and love-making? Yeah, because that totally seems like shit that Mickey would be into. Come on, Gallagher, you’re not that stupid. 

He sighs. He wants to think about it more, but he can feel sleep shutting down his reason. He sets an alarm and lets himself drift off.  
+++

He wakes up with the first beeps of the alarm and quickly shuts it off before it can wake Mickey. He pulls on a t-shirt and his shoes and heads out for a run. It’s confused and full of last-minute turns because Ian has no idea where he’s going and his mind is wandering. He’s still berating his stupidity. He thinks of the way Mickey tensed in his arms. Mickey didn’t want to cuddle with him. He was never going to get that kind of romantic shit from him.

Not that he deserves it, not after almost fucking up Mickey’s sale and getting them both beaten to death. He growls out loud with frustration at himself. He can’t even pinpoint what he did wrong, that’s the worst part. Just being there and being himself was fucking things up for Mickey and he fucking hated it. He just wanted to help. The idea that his very presence could be so dangerous makes him want to cry. His thought from the previous day comes back to him now: this is Mickey’s world and I might not fit into it.

He comes to a full halt in his running.

Fuck that.

He shakes himself out of it. Get it together, Gallagher. Maybe he doesn’t belong now, but he will learn. He can do that.

Mickey is awake when he gets back to the room. He’s sitting on the edge of his bed, putting his shoes on. He looks up quickly at the sound of the door opening. “There you are.”

“Were you going to come looking for me?” Ian in what he hopes is a casual tone. He’s still out of breath from his run and there is sweat dripping into his eyes though, so he’s not sure if he’s pulling it off.

“No, I was going to find some breakfast. I’m starving.” He pauses, then continues. “You coming with me?”

“I have to shower.” Ian gestures to his shirt, soaked through with sweat. 

“I’ll wait for you,” Mickey says and settles back onto his bed.

Under the pounding water of the shower, Ian reflects on Mickey’s words. From someone else I’ll wait for you could be spun into something grandly romantic. It could be something a distraught woman shouts after the ship bearing her husband away from her. Ian lets out a quiet laugh, lost under the noise of the shower. That was too dramatic, he knows. And he could never see Mickey doing that. 

When Mickey says it, it’s not dramatic. Mickey may be many things, but would never be dramatic. When he says it, it’s not romantic. 

Ian shuts off the water.  
+++

They’ve been driving for about five hours when they see the flashing lights of a police car in the rear view mirror.

“Shit.”

“Oh, shit.”

Mickey looks like he’s considering making a run for it, but he silently agrees when Ian tells him he’s not a good enough driver for a high-speed chase. He pulls to the side of the road.

They wait for the officer to approach. Mickey is fidgeting and Ian can see him getting angrier as the cop gets closer. Ian gets caught up in the logistics of it, wondering idly if there is a formula to calculate Mickey’s mood based on proximity to cops. Lip could probably come up with one.

The cop taps on the driver’s window. It’s one of those old ones that Mickey has to crank open by hand.

“License and registration,” the cop says mildly. Mickey hands over the requested items with a fierce scowl. When the officer tries to pull them out of his hands, Mickey tightens his grips for a few tugs before he lets go. He smiles at Ian, a little smug. Did you see that? Ian rolls his eyes. Yeah, way to stick it to him. But he smiles too.

The cop is reading the registration, comparing it with the information on Mickey’s license. “All right… This is your mother’s car?”

“My dad’s,” Mickey growls.

“Oh, my mistake,” the cop says pleasantly. “It’s just- I thought Terry was a woman’s name.”

Ian laughs loudly. A sudden image of Terry in a dress and make-up, playing housewife floods his brain. Mickey takes a break from glaring at the cop to glare at Ian.

“Why the fuck would it be a woman’s name?” Mickey asks them both.

The cop shrugs. “My wife’s name is Terri,” he says apologetically.

Ian is clutching his sides now. If he wasn’t strapped into his seat he would be rolling around on the ground. He knows it’s not that funny, but the image of Terry in drag combined with Mickey’s rapidly growing indignation was too much for him. Shit, just imagine if someone tried to tell Terry that his name is a woman’s name.

The cop catches Ian’s eye and smiles, sharing in the joke even if he doesn’t really understand it. Mickey whips his head back and forth between them, probably trying to decide who to attack first. 

Ian’s laughter finally dies down and the cop says, “I noticed that one of your taillights is out.”

“So fucking what–“

“Yeah, sorry about that,” Ian says over him. “We’ll get it fixed as soon as we get back to Chicago.”

The cop smiles, a little indulgently. “All right, so you don’t want a fix-it ticket?”

“No, thank you.”

The cop hands Mickey his license and registration. “And you, do you want a fix-it ticket, Michael?”

Michael? Ian gapes, then smiles hugely.

“Fuck the police,” Mickey snarls.

“That’s the spirit,” the cop says, pointing at Mickey with his pen. “Always stand up to the man.” He waves cheerfully at both of them as he returns to his car. He pulls back out into traffic and the boys watch him until he is out of sight.

“What the fuck was that?” Mickey says.

“I think they call those police officers, Michael.”

Mickey scowls at him, but lets it go. “I meant why was he being…like that?”

“I think he liked you, Michael.”

“For fuck’s– yes, my name is Michael. Will you shut the fuck up about it now?”

Ian pretends to ponder. “Sure, Michael.”

Mickey lets out a laugh that is part amusement, part frustration. The sound is brief and when it’s gone Ian’s thoughts take off.

Ian just wants to take Mickey’s face between his hands and kiss that expression he’s wearing. He wants to whisper Michael against his lips as he pulls away for a brief moment, then brush the name away with his tongue as he kisses him again.

But he doesn’t.

They’re sitting there in silence, looking at each other, each lost in his own thoughts. Mickey snaps out of it first. He starts the car and pulls out of the shoulder, back onto the highway.

They only make it a mile or two before Mickey pulls the car over to the side of the road abruptly in a sharp swerve that forces the blue Toyota behind them to slam on its brakes. Mickey barely turns off the car before he’s jumping out and walking around to open Ian’s door. In a movement that seems too smooth given the small space in the car, he slides onto Ian’s lap, straddling him, and shuts the door. 

Ian grabs the back of Mickey’s head and pulls him closer so he can suck on the jumping pulse point in his neck. Mickey moans appreciatively and rolls his hips, grinding their clothed erections together. Ian thrusts up shallowly and things get more frantic. They’re clutching at each other and moaning and neither even manages to pull his pants down by the time it’s over.

Mickey presses their sweaty foreheads together and they stay like that for a minute, breathing each other’s air.

Then Mickey is squirming around uncomfortably and Ian is reaching into his bag in the back seat for something to clean up with. They clean up and change their pants, Mickey grumbling at Ian’s mock surprise that Mickey owns more than one pair of pants. As they finish changing, Ian asks, “Why Mickey?”

“Huh?”

“I mean, why not Mike or Mikey? Why Mickey?”

Mickey bites his lip and Ian can see him calculating, deciding whether or not to lie. 

“C’mon, you can tell me,” Ian cajoles.

Mickey sighs. “Fine. I-I had a really high-pitched voice when I was a kid. Don’t laugh.”

Ian presses his lips together.

“Seriously, Mandy sounded like a chain-smoker compared to me. And my…my mom, she called me Mickey Mouse ‘cause that’s what I sounded like. And then it was just Mickey and if you ever tell anyone about this I’ll beat you to death with your own femur.” 

He’s looking everywhere but at Ian. He shrugs, as if to dismiss his story. Ian locks it away in his mind.

He’s greedy for more of Mickey’s stories, but Mickey’s post-coital sharing mood has dissipated.  
+++

They only have the one garbage bag left in the trunk, so there’s no excuse for Ian to help. And after yesterday, he’s not sure that Mickey would want him to. But he gets out of the car anyway, shaking out the cramps in his legs because he has to at least try, right?

“Be careful this time.” 

Ian rolls his eyes, but he’s secretly pleased. Mickey isn’t telling him to get back in the car.

“I mean it. I don’t want to-“

“Get called my boyfriend again?” 

A pause. “Was it really so bad?” Ian asks softly. Softly enough that Mickey can pretend not to hear him if he wants to.

Mickey opens his mouth to reply before his eyes dart over to the waiting drug dealers and he starts to walk towards them, jerking his head to indicate that Ian should follow him. Ian does.

There were three menacing-looking bruisers waiting for them this time. Men with tattoos and leers who were no doubt armed to their broken teeth. Ian gets seized with that ridiculous wave of panic. This isn’t where I should be. He lives rough enough, sure, but not like this. This is Mickey’s world and not his. Maybe there isn’t room for a boyfriend in it.

Was it really so bad? His own words float back to him as Mickey starts the sale. Here he is in Mickey’s world for no other reason than Mickey wanted him there. Mickey asked him to come, Mickey didn’t tell him to stay in the car, Mickey gestured for him to follow him right into the danger zone. With all that, was not officially being called Mickey’s boyfriend so bad?

“What the fuck are you smiling at, punk?”

“Huh?” Ian is pulled from his thoughts. He hadn’t realized he was smiling. Now everyone is staring. 

“What the hell you smiling for, something funny?”

“Wha- oh, no! It’s just- a nice day out,” he stutters weakly. Shit. Shit shit shit. Not again, please not again. He has to fix this. “Is it always this nice out here? It’s snowing back home. My home I mean. But here–“

His babbling is effectively silenced with a quick punch to the gut.  
+++

An hour or two later he is sitting on the kitchen counter in the apartment they are staying in for the night. Apparently, it belongs to Mickey’s uncle’s something, Ian hadn’t really been paying attention when Mickey had explained it. He had been trying not to bleed on the carpet.

Mickey is dabbing at the gash on Ian’s forehead with a cotton swab they had found in Mickey’s uncle’s something’s disturbingly well-stocked first aid kit. Mickey’s lip is tucked between his teeth and his brow is furrowed in concentration and concern. Ian wants to run his finger along that crease and smooth it out. He want to smack Mickey and remind him that he’s had way worse and to stop fussing, it’s confusing him.

What he does is say, “Head wounds bleed a lot. It’s not that bad.”

“Loosing blood is bad,” Mickey says.

“Just put a Band-Aid on it, it’ll be fine.”

Mickey ignores him. The light catches to the red patch on Mickey’s cheek that will be a spectacular bruise in a couple days.

“You should put ice on that,” Ian advises.

“I didn’t know you were a doctor. Thought you were just fucking one.”

“He’s a surgeon. It’s not really the same thing.”

“Whatever.”

Ian leans into Mickey’s hand, the one he’s using to hold Ian’s head still as he cleans the cut. Mickey can’t quite hide his smile; the corners of his mouth turn up slightly but unmistakably. 

Mickey finishes cleaning the blood and grabs a Band-Aid. “What the hell were you smiling about anyway?”

Ian thinks about lying, but nothing will be a good enough excuse so he may as well tell the truth. “You.”

Mickey doesn’t respond, just gets himself some ice like Ian said earlier.

“Yeah,” Ian continues as if Mickey had prompted him to say more. “I was just thinking about you bringing me along. You didn’t have to – you probably shouldn’t have, really, I’m shit at this stuff – but you did. I mean, even if it’s just for entertainment,” he finishes, pointing at his injured face. Ian hopes that enough. Hopes it’s not too much. He can’t put anymore of it into words, not with Mickey looking at him like that. His cheeks redden slightly.

“Yeah, I want you here,” Mickey says, keeping his eyes on the ice in his hands. He raises them to Ian’s after a long pause. 

“Me too.”

“Just don’t fuck it up tomorrow.”

“I won’t.”

“And don’t call me Michael or I swear to god, Gallagher–“

“I won’t. Michael.”

Mickey laughs then raises his eyebrows. “We can’t go back home looking all beat-up. Dad will never let me go again.”

“I guess we’ll have to hang out here for a few days then.”

He jerks his head to the open door. “Got any ideas about what we should do to kill time?” It’s not a question, even though he says it like one. Ian pushes Mickey gently towards the bedroom.


End file.
